The Mammals Are Your Favorite Type
Jun. 16th, 2025 09:27 pm
I've been feeling pretty lethargic recently, and haven't even felt like playing video games that much. I have done a few things in the past few weeks that are probably worth talking about, though. It was Beth's mom's birthday on the twenty-fifth of last month, and we visited and went to the zoo in Bridgeton, where I felt the need to pose with animal statues.

Beth was wearing her Frasier hat, so I tried to get a picture of her with some cranes, but it didn't come out very well. There were several peacocks wandering around the place.

One of the lemurs was sitting on a sliding board.

These pigs with long ears and tails were interesting.

And they had some leopards and tigers that reminded me of our cats in a few respects.



Black cats usually remind me of panthers. I believe black panthers are actually leopards, but cougars are also sometimes called panthers. These designations aren't always that specific. One of the lemurs And my mother-in-law shoved me into a lion fountain. Somehow, I survived.

On the first of this month, we saw Scott Thompson perform as Buddy Cole at the City Winery, which is a pretty inconvenient venue, but they've had a few things we've been interested in.
The last show we saw there was John Waters, and while Scott is younger, they both came from a time when being gay was much more dangerous and subversive, and seem somewhat bemused by that community today. Then on that Thursday, we saw a Kevin Geeks Out show at the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg. It was about advertising, with topics including how slogans are used in movies and television, with Kevin Maher mentioning that he thought there would be more characters using them as one-liners when killing somebody. He made up for it with a video of various Arnold Schwarzenegger kill scenes with somewhat relevant slogans dubbed in. Steve Young, a former writer for David Letterman, had two segments, one on collectible playing cards advertising local businesses, often with bizarrely lazy art; and another on records of stock clips and jingles to play in radio commercials. On our way back to the subway, I noticed some art by Molly Crabapple, who did a lot of work for Max Fractal (formerly Kim Boekbinder), and whose book I own.

Our next show was EXTC at (Le) Poisson Rouge in Manhattan last Thursday.

I believe the concept started when Terry Chambers, the drummer for XTC on their first five albums and a bit of the sixth, did some shows with Colin Moulding. Colin isn't part of the touring band now, but Terry still plays, and the set includes songs from after Terry had left the band. It's done with the blessing of Andy Partridge, who stopped playing live after a panic attack in 1982. The rest of the band consists of Steve Hampton on lead vocals and guitar, and Terry Lines on bass and backing vocals.

The songs were all performed quite closely to the studio recordings. Steve didn't replicate all of Andy's vocal oddities, but I'm not sure Andy could anymore either. It was a fun time. I bought a CD there, but I haven't listened to it yet.

I'll also mention that I got my sketchbook from Becca Whitaker, whom I've known online for a long time, and it's full of colorful pin-ups based on popular media. There's a section of cereal mascots, which is up my alley even though I don't eat a lot of cereal. Mermaids and horror icons are also well-represented. For my copy, she drew Artemis and Jack Pumpkinhead.

And today, I received these from Vylirium.

There's a lot of cool art online, and I haven't really put any of it on display, despite having lived in the same place for almost seven years. I need to clean up first, and it's difficult to get motivated. You'd think being able to decorate would BE the motivation, but I guess we're back to the lethargy again.